Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at language, education, and everything else under the sun. I’m Joel, amateur linguist and professional slacker. And, this week, just like everyone else, we're playing Animal Crossing.
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The past few weeks and months have been more than a little stressful. The reasons are obvious, plentiful, and, in too many cases, a question of life-and-death. So, if in the light of all that, this week's issue of Learned seems particularly inconsequential and fluffy, it's by design.
It's been a little over a month and a half since Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released to a world desperately awaiting it. Ever since the announcement and release of the Nintendo Switch a couple of years ago, fans have been clamoring for a new Animal Crossing game. And, not only did Nintendo deliver, it delivered to a much-wider audience than usual due to its coincidental timing with The Great Pause. It's a fantastic game, and one I've been really enjoying playing with my daughter. But it's got me thinking.
I am Groot. Photo by Anton Titov on Unsplash
For the remaining few of you who don't know, ACNH is a life-simulation game full of anthropomorphic animal characters who interact with your avatar as you create and maintain your own island paradise. And, right there in that sentence are the two things I've been thinking about: anthropomorphism and simulation.
Anthropomorphic is a big word that just means characters that are human in all but shape. Most of us have at least one favorite anthropomorphic character, whether from the funny pages, comics, or t.v. (Mine is Snoopy. Opus runs a very close second.) But we can see the same concept applied to just about everything, whether it's your friend telling you what their cat thinks or an engineer telling his computer, "well done."
Animal Crossing likes to get recursive with its characters. As the main villager, you can give household items to your villagers. And these household items are drawn from all walks of contemporary life. Which means its not uncommon to see players gift a favorite character with a pet bowl or a pet bed. Whether these gifts are meant for the character, or whether they are meant to imply that, say, Raymond the Cat has a pet cat of his own remains unclear and up to the individual player.
But that brings us back to simulation. I've played a number of simulation games over the years. My favorite tend to be empire builders (Civilization II was my first and will forever hold a special place in my awkward, little heart) and city builders (I never had a Super-Nintendo of my own and so my city in my friend's copy of SimCity used to get erased a lot. The trauma is real.) but I've played quite a few others in other sub-genres over the years, including, now, the life-simulator that is Animal Crossing.
What's interesting to me about life-simulators is how people play them, something that has been brought to the fore by the advent of YouTube and especially of streaming technology. There's a real fascination, not unlike watching reality t.v., to watching someone play a simulation game in a way that is antithetical to your own style. It's maddening.
Like, for example, there's a YouTuber I sometimes watch who uses The Sims 4 to create impossible, awkward situations for his characters that result in their humiliation, exhaustion, and occasional death. On the rare occasions I play The Sims (instead of just building incredible mansions I could never afford in real life), my sims tend to lead idyllic lives full of adventure and luxury.
And that's what I've been enjoying most about Animal Crossing as I play it with my daughter. It seems almost perfectly designed for us to share a character. I send our character, Fu-chan, who is human, as are all player-created characters, out to gather fruit, go fishing, build roads and lakes, and carry out dutiful conversations with all the villagers inhabiting our island. My daughter takes Fu-chan right back to her house where she (my daughter) can spend hours trying out new clothes, make-up, and hairstyles for Fu-chan.
I’m not entirely sure that this pug enjoys being anthropomorphized. Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
Occasionally, a new villager joins our island or just stays at our campsite. These new characters are always animal-based and some are, truthfully, pretty strange looking. I always play through the chats with the characters and relay this information back to my daughter. She usually listens and comments that the characters are cute or funny or whatever. Then, the other day she said, it would be better if they looked like us (human). I was surprised, but she got distracted by something and never elaborated.
I think that highlights the differences in who we are at this moment in time: I see Animal Crossing and other simulations as an escape, a way to make the world better than the one outside the window is. But my daughter sees it as a mirror, a way the world could be, full of possibilities to explore and challenges to face.
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There will be a new issue of The Glossary on Friday. Until then, stay strong, stay safe, stay curious. Learn something.
Joel